Author: Hunter Bassler

Mass firings strain US wildland firefighters

Lanny Flaherty was over 2,000 miles from home setting prescribed burns in Louisiana when he was fired from his Forest Service job.

The termination was immediate and did not include a severance package, Flaherty told WildfireToday. Despite being miles away from his Oregon home on official duty, Flaherty was told he’d have to find his own way home. It took his union fighting on his behalf for the USFS to temporarily rescind his termination so he could get home.

Flaherty’s experience is just one of the countless examples showing the chaos that the Trump Administration has caused in its mass firing of thousands of federal land employees, chaos that will have ripple effects for the nation’s wildland firefighting force, according to Grassroots Wildland Firefighters Vice President Riva Duncan.

Flaherty was a range ecologist in Oregon’s Wallowa-Whitman National Forest whose primary duties were studying vegetation and fungi. But, like countless other USFS employees, he had wildfire-fighting secondary duties that made up around half of his job.

I pulled end-of-the-year earning and leave statements for the last few years and saw that I was spending around 40% to 50% of my hours on fire incidents,” Flaherty said. “That alone is thousands of man hours that aren’t going to be available the next time a fire pops up.”

Duncan said Flaherty’s experience was incredibly common across the Forest Service. Around 75% of the USFS probationary employees that the Trump Administration fired had secondary wildland fire duties, according to numbers Duncan obtained from the National Federation of Federal Employees’ Wildland Fire division.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) previously told WildfireToday that it didn’t lay off operational firefighters, but the people it did fire provided critical help to wildland firefighters.

“While ‘primary firefighters’ were exempt, the positions that were cut made some pretty huge contributions to operational wildland fire,” Duncan said. “For example, eastern national forests rely much more heavily on these collateral duty folks to do a lot of prescribed burning and initial attack of wildfires…There were people working the LA fires who, because it was the offseason, weren’t primary fire but were filling in on engines and crews.”

The U.S. wildland firefighting force has been critically short-staffed for years, with former Forest Service Chief Randy Moore testifying in 2022 that firefighting positions in some areas were only 50% filled. Union leaders have feared a looming “mass exodus” of firefighters every time a 2021 pay boost is narrowly passed by Congress.

Both Duncan and Flaherty said the recent cuts would only strain firefighters further. Not only will the layoffs deprive firefighters of much-needed help, but firefighters have also since been asked to help pick up the duties of fired personnel, increasing an already heavy burden within the fire workforce.

“The remaining workforce becomes people charged with picking up trash at campgrounds or marking timber while we aren’t having fires,” Duncan said. “A lot of firefighters are concerned that they’re just going to be told to do even more with even less, have more of a burden, and maybe even held back from fire assignments to work on some of those other things, because some areas still do that.”

Despite the turmoil Flaherty’s firing caused, he said he’d still be willing to return to his job if an offer came his way. He still believes in the work he was doing and the importance of land stewardship, even if the current administration doesn’t believe in him or people like him. In the meantime, he hopes a tragedy doesn’t occur with understaffed fire crews.

“This is ultimately going to cost lives and endanger everybody that’s out there on the fire line,” Flaherty said.

Flaherty’s chance may come sooner than he expected. The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), an independent federal court that focuses on government employee complaints, issued a stay order against the USDA on Wednesday. The Board ordered the reinstatement of every position terminated within the department since Feb. 13 to be reinstated for at least 45 days, on the grounds that USDA’s mass and indiscriminate termination was likely unlawful.

It’s unclear how the reinstatement will actually play out, and how many employees will return, according to Duncan.

“No one seems to know what the next steps are or how to re-hire people,” Duncan said. “In other words, nothing seems to have trickled down to the (Forest Service) or (Department of the Interior) regarding this and the process.”

If Flaherty’s job, and the thousands of other public land positions, are reinstated, the process may be as chaotic as the original firing, which doesn’t inspire confidence in the department’s employees and an already strained wildland firefighting force.

USDA was ordered to submit proof it complied with MSPB’s stay by March 10.

Boreal forests’ wildfire recovery significantly stunted from high-intense flames and post-fire logging, study finds

More carbon is stored in boreal forests than any other type of forest, but that’s changing with increasingly frequent and severe wildfires.

More than four years after a wildfire burned more than ten times the annual mean of land in Sweden, a burnt boreal forest’s soil has yet to recover, a group of researchers recently found. Vegetation within the slow-growing forests had shown no signs of recovery, in part due to decomposition and carbon releases, or soil respiration, in the forest’s soil being significantly impacted by high-intensity fire.

“As forest floor respiration is tightly coupled to tree root activity, it is likely to take many more years before it reaches the levels observed at an unburnt control stand,” the researchers said in their recently published Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Journal paper.

Forest burnt by 2018 Wildfires in Sweden. Credit: Moralist – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The researchers affirmed that a decline in carbon releases from soil may sound like a positive change in the context of global, greenhouse gas-driven climate change, but the fact misses the forest for the trees. In reality, a lack of soil respiration means fewer trees and other vegetation can grow, turning a once carbon-sink forest into a long-term carbon emitter.

Which trees were logged after the fire also played a large role in the forest’s recovery, the researchers said. The logging of living trees after low-severity fire led to “immediate and significant” decreases in soil respiration, while the salvage-logging of dead trees after high-severity fire significantly slowed the regrowth of understory vegetation.

“Our results highlight the significant and persistent changes to forest floor carbon fluxes due to fire and choice of post-fire management strategy,” the paper said. “Future work is needed to investigate the interaction effect between fire severity and salvage-logging and to more closely examine the effects of different site preparation methods on post-fire soil carbon fluxes and vegetation recovery in the boreal context.”

Click here to read the full paper.

Thousands evacuated as Japan’s largest wildfire in 30 years burns

Thousands of residents in northern Japan were forced to flee their homes as a record-setting wildfire burned near their properties.

Crews from the nation’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency (FDMA) began fighting the fire on Wednesday. Three days later, it officially became Japan’s largest wildfire in the last 30 years. The fire burned nearly 3,000 acres (1,200 hectares) as of Friday, along with threatening 1,755 homes and 4,263 people southeast of Ofunato City.

The agency also said one person has died and over 80 homes have burned.

The wildfire surpassed the previous burned area record of 2,545 acres (1,030 hectares) set in 1992 in Kushiro, FDMA said. That makes this fire the largest wildfire since the nation’s Heisei era, which lasted from 1989 through 2019.

FDMA said 17 fire brigades made up of 2,569 people were fighting the fire as of Friday afternoon. The brigades include a command support team from the Tokyo Fire Department and helicopters from Fukushima Prefecture Disaster Prevention.

Japan Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba dedicated “maximum effort” towards firefighting activities to prevent the fire from further spreading into residential areas, a statement from Ishiba’s office said. He also advised crews to work closely with local governments to provide evacuation assistance and the recovery of affected residents.

Any fire that burns more than 25 acres (10 hectares) is considered a “large” wildfire, according to Tohoku University combustion researcher Samuel Manzello.

The frequent high winds that Japan experiences can cause massive conflagrations, but despite that, the nation has only taken minimal concrete steps toward preparing for future fires, according to Manzello.

“Japan is not prepared for the (Wildland-Urban Interface) fire threat, as there have been no major efforts to address it here,” Manzello told Wildfire Today. “At the same time, in Japan, fire researchers believe a wrong impression that WUI fires are a problem that only bothers famous people. In general, WUI fires are often reported in the Japanese news media from the perspective of famous Hollywood people losing their homes.”

Cuts to wildland firefighter force – how have you been affected?

It’s been over a month since President Donald Trump began his nationwide federal hiring freeze and job-cut effort. Since then, the impact on the nation’s wildland firefighting force remains unclear.

A USDA spokesperson told Wildfire Today that the agency had laid off 2,000 probationary employees from the Forest Service, but claimed the layoffs were non-firefighters.

“To be clear, none of these individuals were operational firefighters,” the USDA statement said. “Released employees were probationary in status, many of whom were compensated by temporary IRA funding.”

Reporting from various news outlets, however, gives first-hand accounts of employees with wildland firefighter roles having their jobs cut, many of which had jobs at the USFS.

“Uncertainty is at an all-time high. Morale is at an all-time low,” a federal wildland firefighter told ProPublica.

Wildfire Today has a dedicated reader base of wildland firefighters, hotshots, and fire managers. We want to hear how these cuts have affected you, your colleagues, and your area’s firefighting force. In addition, many of the reports have been of cuts to related workers and programs, such as in land and forest management, public information activities, and new equipment purchases. These impact upon firefighting too.

Share your own experience with Wildfire Today in a comment below. Keep it short and succinct. Tell us what you are seeing so we can all get a better, wider view of what is going on.

Update – thanks for all the comments coming in. Your insights and honesty is much needed and welcomed. But just note that I am deleting any personal abuse, long articles cut-and-pasted into the comment, and comments just too obscure for anyone to understand. Keep it nice, keep it factual. We will follow up on some of the comments as best we can. David Bruce, editor, Wildfire Today.

Massive lead spike in Los Angeles’ air during wildfires, CDC says

Thousands of Los Angeles residents fled their communities in January as the Palisades and Eaton fires neared their homes. While they escaped the dangers of the flames, another danger was spewed into the air, affecting countless other people.

Airborne lead levels in the city were 110 times higher than usual during the wildfires, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Los Angeles’ “Atmospheric Science and Chemistry mEasurment NeTwork (ASCENT)” (sic) site measured the increase from Jan. 8 to 11, with lead amounts spiking on Jan. 9.

The CDC attributed the increased lead levels to the homes that burned, many of which were built before 1978 when use of leaded paint was still common.

“The presence of heavy metals such as lead is not unusual in urban fire emissions, particularly in California, where legacy pollutants from older infrastructure, industrial sources, and soils can be remobilized during fires,” the CDC’s report said. “For example, during the 2018 Camp fire, monitors recorded ambient PM_2.5lead concentrations that averaged 0.13 μg/m³ during a period of 17 hours.”

The health effects from the lead-heavy emissions won’t be specifically known for some time, but center officials said ASCENT’s real-time measurements of airborne lead and other chemical constituents from the wildfires will be combined with health data of smoke-exposed individuals to gain a better understanding.

Generally, increased lead levels affect nearly every human organ, accumulate in teeth and bones, and pose significant health risks, especially for children who are more vulnerable to the element’s neurodevelopmental effects, the CDC said.

“Measures including removing lead from gasoline and leaded pipes and the banning or limiting of lead in consumer products, such as residential paint, have led to a 97% decrease in airborne lead concentrations in the United States since 1980,” the report said. “However, unlike chronic lead exposure, which has been widely studied, the health effects of brief, elevated lead exposures, such as those described in this report, are not well understood. Additional health research is needed, because airborne lead levels alone do not necessarily indicate exposure.”

Click here to read the full report.

Japan is a leader in firebrand research. It’s now sharing expertise with southern Africa

Urban fires have plagued Japan for generations, the most notorious of which killed nearly 45,000 people.

A strong earthquake and tsunami claimed thousands of lives around Tokyo and Yokohama in 1923, but then came the fire. The region’s wooden homes, cookstoves, and ruptured gas lines ignited fires that extreme winds worsened, soon setting the entire city ablaze. Most people were immolated by a 300-foot-tall funnel of fire known as a “dragon twist,” according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Japan’s tragedies drove the nation to become a leader in urban fire and combustion research, an expertise it still fosters today. It’s now sharing that knowledge with researchers from South Africa and Botswana.

The “dragon twist” representation above may be one of the oldest artistic representations of the firebrand showers. The phenomenon happens when large amounts of embers from a fire get blown airborne, igniting possible fires elsewhere.

The 1923 tragedy and others like it pushed Japan to study the phenomenon, leading to the nation building the world’s first large-scale wind tunnel for fire testing, nicknamed the “Dragon”. The research replicates building and vegetation ignitions during firebrand showers, according to Samuel Manzello, a combustion researcher at Tohoku University’s Institute of Fluid Science.

“Our firebrand research using the Dragon had become very well-known across the world,” Manzello told Wildfire Today. “In Japan, you could conduct experiments on actual, real-scale building components. In the USA, there were no such facilities to do this type of research.”

Tohoku University‘s firebrand research would go on to catch the attention of researchers in Southern Africa, who have dealt with numerous firebrand shower disasters. The joint interest led to the Japan Science and Technology Agency launching the AfriWUIFire project in 2023 to bring together experts from both regions to help mitigate firebrands’ global threat.

The joint research would also help establish international testing methods and common testing methodology, Manzello said. The vast difference in vegetation types in both regions benefit researchers in determining the propensity of each vegetation type to produce firebrands, which can then be used in numerous countries.

“Through years of research in Japan, we have developed experimental methodologies to better understand and quantify the dangers of firebrands, so exchange of information is important,” Manzello said. “At the same time, there is a need to develop globally accepted international standard test methods for firebrand quantification from vegetative and structural fuel combustion. The project affords the ability to independently compare test methods across multiple countries for disparate vegetation types, to develop such international test methods.”

AfriWUIFire researchers from Japan, including Manzello, traveled to South Africa in April to evaluate local fire hazards and then attended an Africa-Japan Collaborative Research workshop in Botswana. Soon, AfriWUIFire researchers from Africa will visit Japan, in part to conduct full-scale vegetation combustion experiments and quantify firebrands using the Dragon.

Click here to read more about the partnership.

‘National Wildland Fire Service,’ federal firefighter consolidation push kicked off by U.S. senators

Two U.S. senators are pushing to consolidate the nation’s wildland firefighting force into a single agency.

Republican Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana and Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California recently introduced a Senate bill that would create the “National Wildland Fire Service.” The bill directs the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior to reorganize federal wildland fire response nationwide, create a Director of the National Wildland Firefighting Service position, and develop a description for the new agency.

“The Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior (referred to in this Act as the ‘Secretaries’) shall jointly develop a plan to consolidate the authorities of the Secretaries relating to Federal wildland fire preparedness, suppression, and recovery efforts under an agency of the Department of the Interior, to be known as the ‘National Wildland Firefighting Service’,” the bill’s text reads.

Click here for the full text of the bill.

Sheehy and Padilla also recently introduced legislation to create a “National Wildfire Intelligence Center” modeled after the National Weather Service to coordinate fire response across federal and state institutions. The Senators called the current system “unnecessarily burdensome,” and said this bill would close gaps in federal response, as multiple agencies currently have their own fire management goals, firefighters, and jurisdictions.

“There is established in the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of the Interior a joint office, to be known as the ‘Wildfire Intelligence Center’…serving as the development and operational center for the comprehensive assessment and prediction of fires that occur in the wildland and fires that move into the built environment to provide decision support services to inform land and fuels management, community outreach and risk reduction, post-wildfire recovery and rehabilitation, and fire management,” the bill’s text read.

Sheehy, before becoming a senator, founded Bridger Aerospace, which operates the largest private Super Scooper fleet in the US, according to its website. He said the acts would streamline resources for wildland fire events.

“We can all agree that the federal government must do a better job protecting our people, property, public lands, and communities from wildfires, and this bill will go a long way in streamlining our wildland firefighting efforts and best leveraging all available resources to accomplish our shared mission,” Sheehy said. “As the only aerial firefighter in the Senate, I’m proud to be working with folks on both sides of the aisle to deliver commonsense solutions to more effectively fight the devastating threat of wildfires and protect the American people.”

The Grassroots Wildland Firefighters advocacy group applauded the move to establish a National Wildland Fire Service, saying the creation of such an agency has been its goal since it began.

“This new agency would consolidate all wildland fire management responsibilities from the five separate federal land management agencies (US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs) into a single, cohesive agency,” the advocacy group said. “The new agency should be a comprehensive wildland fire management agency directly under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and should be run by experienced wildland fire practitioners and managers. We are optimistic about the discussion this new legislation will generate, but there are few specifics on how it will be implemented.”

The group said the agency’s creation would streamline response to wildfire events, prioritize the safety of wildland firefighters, and efficiently provide cost-savings to American taxpayers.

The “National Wildland Fire Service” bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry on Feb. 6. The “Wildfire Intelligence Center” bill was referred to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry also on Feb. 6.

LA wildfires fully contained, donations still open

Los Angeles’ historic Palisades and Eaton fires are fully contained after nearly a month of burning, according to CalFire officials. The cause of the fires is still under investigation.

“The conditions, that night, were unbearable,” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said during an interview with 60 Minutes. “It was a devil wind that came out, you know, that extreme Santa Ana wind condition.”

In the wake of the devastation Governor Gavin Newsome signed a $2.5 billion aid package to help the city rebuild, while numerous fundraisers opened with a range of objectives. The massive FireAid concert and the fundraiser linked to the Grammy Awards are hoping to raise over $100 million and $24 million respectively, according to the Associated Press and Variety.

Numerous other relief efforts are underway, including:

GoFundMe – A verified fundraiser page for many affected by the wildfires.
The American Red Cross – Wildfire donation page that includes help to shelter families, serve meals, and support emergency responders.
The LA Regional Food Bank – Wildfire update page where people can make donations, receive updates, and make food donations.
The Salvation Army – A verified relief page for all those affected by the wildfires.
Direct Relief – The California-based disaster relief and medical assistance organization has a donation page for all those affected by the wildfires.
World Central Kitchen – An organization that provides fresh meals to communities in need has a donation page for all those affected by the wildfires.
SPCA LA – A donation page for helping animals in the wake of disaster.
Pasadena Humane Society – A wildfire donation page for helping animals in the wake of disaster.

EPA begins ‘largest wildfire hazardous material removal’ in agency history

More than 13,000 residential and 250 commercial structures in the Los Angeles area were affected by the Palisades Fire and Eaton Fire, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Officials are now kicking off the largest cleanup of hazardous material from a wildfire in agency history.

The agency announced on Monday that it has deployed 1,050 response personnel into the area, up from the 478 personnel in the field last week. The EPA also announced it has begun assembling 60 teams to clear hazardous materials from the remaining properties, all at no cost to residents.

“We’re not going to wait days or weeks or months to ramp up,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a press release. “We have over a thousand personnel on the ground to aid Californians, and our local, state, and federal partners, in Los Angeles’s recovery. The Trump administration is tackling this head-on in a way that EPA couldn’t possibly be prouder to be a part of.”

EPA said its first priority is removing lithium-ion batteries in the area affected by the wildfire and properly disposing of them. Many homes in the burned areas had energy storage systems and/or electric hybrid vehicles, and the agency has reportedly removed 80 of them burned or destroyed in the fire.

“Residents returning home are encouraged to exercise extreme caution and can call our hotline at 1-833-798-7372 if they encounter a lithium-ion battery while re-entering their property and/or are unsure if a lithium-ion battery was damaged,” the EPA said.

The agency, in the cleanup’s second phase, will remove debris in the fires’ burn footprints so the material isn’t released into the environment. Phase 2 will primarily be conducted by FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The material that will be removed includes:

Paints
Cleaning supplies
Automotive oils
Garden products such as herbicides and pesticides
Batteries
Propane tanks and other pressurized gas containers

In wake of deadly Lahaina wildfire, new Hawaii report sheds light on how to stop future tragedies

Hawaii officials have released their third and final report on Maui’s deadly Lahaina Fire in 2023, focusing on how each of Hawaii’s counties can prevent a similar tragedy from happening again.

The Fire Safety Research Institute‘s “Lahaina Fire Forward-Looking Report” is phase three of a three-part investigation into the catastrophic wildfire. The group previously released the Lahaina Fire Comprehensive Timeline Report, which presents a chronology of the fire’s events, and the Lahaina Fire Incident Analysis Report, which looked into the systemic causes and response to the fire.

“It is vital to reiterate, as demonstrated throughout this report, that no single factor is, or set of factors are, directly responsible for the tragic outcome,” the Phase Three report said. “The preconditions for these fires have been in the making for decades, stemming from the changing landscape of Maui Nui, more frequent extreme weather events, and the increased frequency of vegetation-fueled fires. It is important to note these same conditions exist across the State of Hawaii, in numerous other locations throughout the United States, and around the globe.”

The report identified 10 priorities for enhancing wildfire readiness throughout the state, the top two of which focused on establishing an Office of the State Fire Marshal and creating an action plan for future wildfire events through working with the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization. The eight remaining priorities are focused on how the State Fire Marshal can implement said action plan, including:

Wildfire Education Programming
Communication Systems
Utilities Risk Reduction & Planning
Fire Weather
Evacuation
Codes & Standards
Wildfire Response Preparedness
Vegetation & Land Management

The report also breaks down how wildfire readiness can be enhanced at the county level, specifically through risk assessment and data-driven investment. The priorities were reviewed by each county fire chief, according to the researchers.

“This streamlined approach provides a clear roadmap for the counties to initiate progress and take the critical first steps necessary to establish a solid foundation that supports future meaningful improvements,” the researchers said.

Click here to read the full report.